Former state senator Eliot Shapleigh praised the Texas Education Agency for stripping the district's board members' powers, and even though it happened years after his warning, Shapleigh called it the first step in a healing process.

As KFOX14 previously reported, TEA Commissioner Michael Williams announced the appointment of a board of managers to oversee the El Paso Independent School District after a cheating scheme has district officials serving or possibly facing criminal charges.

Shapleigh commends the TEA's decision, but it comes years after he first warned that something was seriously wrong within EPISD.

"I think the board of managers is absolutely phenomenal; it's a great step," he said. "We can start the healing process and we can build back that district."

Shapleigh said there are still many employees in the district who were involved in former superintendent Lorenzo Garcia's cheating scheme, for which he is now serving three years in prison.

"There are layers and layers of folks who were involved in this, and they have not been identified and not been terminated," Shapleigh said. "That needs to happen or the district's not going to get back to being a good district that does its work."

The former senator told KFOX14 that anyone who was involved or knew what was going on and did nothing needs to be removed.

The board of managers will need to deal with the hundreds of students who were turned away under Garcia's cheating operation.

Even though Shapleigh praises the TEA commissioner, he feels that the TEA must answer for their own mistakes.

"The TEA passed the buck; there were two or three people at the TEA that knew every single thing that was going on, I know because I briefed them and I asked them to do something and they did nothing," Shapleigh said. "So if Williams is really going to do his job, clean up TEA too."

Shapleigh also feels that this problem is not limited to EPISD.

"I guarantee you that there are three districts that have this kind of pattern in them, and to me right now for El Paso and the entire community, we've got to identify what happened, we've got to clean it up, we've got to fix it now and not pass it on to another generation," he said.

The school board intends to challenge the TEA's decision to strip them of their power, and they will hold a special meeting Tuesday where they are expected to announce the termination of more employees tied to the cheating scandal.